you might be doing differently? like maybe you shouldn't have gone on tv and suggested we might inject bleach to cure covid? he had no problem -- >> former president barack obama has been having what appears to be the time of his life on the campaign trail for joe biden recently. tonight we learned that president obama's going to make a joint appearance with joe biden on saturday on halloween in michigan, just three days before this election comes to a close. you will recall that obama and biden handily carried michigan in 2008 and in 2012, whereas donald trump eked out a win in 2016 there by 10,000 votes. while obama and biden will be together in michigan on saturday. that's going to do it for us tonight. see you again tomorrow. now it's time for "the last word" with lawrence o'donnell. good evening, lawrence. >> good evening, rachel. and when i hear president obama saying -- asking donald trump about would you do anything differently, that inspires for me a tip to the viewing audience out there.

if you ever run into rachel maddow, ask her if there's anything she wishes she did differently in last night's show and have some time to listen to the answer. okay? because rachel, you're capable of rethinking the way you do things, to put it mildly. >> i don't know what -- i don't know what you mean. i definitely don't lie awake every night completely reliving every second of everything i did wrong in the previous 24 hours. i don't do that. >> it is called the curse of perfectionism. and that is why we watch. >> well, you are very kind. but that's also why i need to see my doctor more frequently than i do. >> there's a price to everything. thank you, rachel. >> yes. thank you, lawrence. well, the candidate who professional democrats in washington most wanted to see run for senate because they thought he was a sure bet to

take a senate seat away from republicans will be joining us at the end of the hour tonight to help concentrate our minds on the second most important thing at stake on election night, control of the united states senate. last year john hickenlooper was a candidate for president. this year he is the democratic candidate for senate in colorado, where he is running eight points ahead of the incumbent republican. john hickenlooper has won statewide in colorado twice before in both of his campaigns for governor. we might have many surprises as the votes are counted in the senate races next week. but john hickenlooper winning in colorado will not be a surprise to anyone. john hickenlooper will join us at the end of the hour and get tonight's last word. steve kornacki will join us later in the hour to take a close look at the polls, which are much more favorable tonight for joe biden than they were for hillary clinton at this point four years ago.

and we will be joined by congresswoman katie porter tonight, who has a story to tell about the importance of counting votes after election night. it took well over a week of vote counting in her california congressional district two years ago for katie porter to be declared the winner of that seat, taking a seat away from republicans. and katie porter did not just flip a house seat from republican to democrat. she went on to become one of the most effective members of the house of representatives that i have ever seen. the big polling number of the day is the 12-point lead for joe biden in a cnn national poll of likely voters, 54-42. now, that poll has a margin of error of 3.8%. and that means roughly that joe biden's number could be as low as 50 and donald trump's number could be as high as 46, which means at a minimum, even with that margin of error, joe biden has at least a four-point lead

over donald trump, even with that margin of error. and at this point four years ago it might have looked like hillary clinton had a lead in the polls, which averaged 45 for clinton, 42 for trump at this point. but that three-point margin was within the margin of error. and so really it was a statistical tie. and at this point everyone involved in the trump campaign with the possible exception of donald trump seems to believe that donald trump is going to lose, especially the advance team, who are in charge of getting people to and from donald trump's deadly rallies. last night donald trump and his campaign staff found a new way to threaten the lives of trump voters. this time it wasn't just a matter of assembling them too close together without masks. this time the trump campaign decided that their job was simply to deliver people to the trump rally and then wish them luck getting home, which left some of them on the verge of

freezing to death on a snowy night in nebraska. the omaha police department says that 30 people needed medical attention because they were stranded by the trump campaign in the cold waiting hours for buses to rescue them from that vicious cold that donald trump left them in. seven of those people were taken to hospitals so that they could survive a night on the campaign trail with donald trump. during the rally donald trump didn't feel even slightly sorry for the people who were enduring those freezing conditions because, as we know, there is only room in that space where his heart is supposed to be for donald trump to have sympathy for himself. >> i mean, i'm standing here freezing. i ask you one little favor, get the hell out and vote. the great red wave. at least you're down there with each other.

i'm all up here and that wind is blowing. >> that wind was still blowing when donald trump walked back onto air force one and left all of those people out in the cold. it was the most perfect trump campaign event so far for democrats, who said that it mirrored the trump presidency perfectly. democratic nebraska state senator megan hunt tweeted last night, "supporters of the president were brought in but buses weren't able to get back to transport people out. it's freezing and snowy in omaha tonight. what people will do for this con man, what people have sacrificed is so sad to me. he truly does not care about you." and today joe biden said this. >> just look at what happened last night in omaha. after trump -- after the trump rally ended. hundreds of people including older americans and children were stranded in subzero

freezing temperatures for hours. several folks ended up in the hospital. it's an image that captures president trump's whole approach to this crisis. he takes a lot of big pronouncements, he makes a lot of big pronouncements, but they don't hold up. he gets his photo op and then he gets out. he leaves everyone else to suffer the consequence of his failure to make a responsible plan. it seems like he just doesn't care much about it. and the longer he's in charge the more reckless he gets. it's enough. it's time to change. >> according to cnn.com, after the rally police officers tried to control the scene but struggled to bring order to the pandemonium. there were no campaign advance teams in sight. one local advance volunteer said they were given no instructions how to get supporters back onto the buses. "we need at least 30 more buses," an omaha police officer said, shaking his head.

and so the trump death tour has found a new way to threaten the lives of people who support donald trump for president. a campaign that hopes to win hearts and minds and votes has instructions for how to get supporters back on the buses. but not the trump campaign. while donald trump is out on the campaign trail lying in virtually every sentence, the white house is busy lying for donald trump at taxpayer expense. >> yesterday the white house science office, and this stunned me, put out a statement listing ending the covid-19 pandemic as a top accomplishment of president trump's first term. top accomplishment of trump's first term. at the very moment when infection rates are going up almost every state in our union. the refusal of the trump administration to recognize the reality we're living through at

a time when almost 1,000 americans a day are dying every single day is an insult to every single person suffering from covid-19 and every family who's lost a loved one. >> in these closing days of the campaign we don't want to help donald trump deliver misinformation and lies. and so we will only show video of donald trump on the campaign trail when he is telling the truth. here, then, is everything donald trump had to say today on the campaign trail that is true. >> covid, covid, covid. >> and here is a demented lie that donald trump told in bullhead city, arizona, today. donald trump said, and if you can't follow this it's not your fault, donald trump said, "a safe vaccine is coming quickly. you're going to have it momentarily.

that eradicates the virus and we're rounding the turn regardless. you know that. we've got the vaccine. i say regardless. they'll say, well, maybe you don't. we have great companies. that quickly ends the pandemic." today dr. anthony fauci said we are at least a year away from what donald trump calls rounding the turn. >> i would imagine at least in the united states the way things are looking that if we get a vaccination campaign and by the second or third quarter of 2021 we have vaccinated a substantial proportion of the people, i think it will be easily by the end of 2021 and perhaps even into the next year before we start having some semblances of normality. >> and bob woodward's tapes have now taken their place on the campaign trail as the gift that

keeps on giving in the self-incrimination of donald trump and his crushingly incompetent staff. today bob woodward released tapes of the most ignorant and incompetent son-in-law of a president in history. in the tapes jared kushner incriminates jared kushner for saying in april that the doctors were not in charge in dealing with the coronavirus and saying proudly that donald trump owns every bad thing that has happened to this country because the doctors are not in charge. here is jared kushner on tape on april 18th. >> i do believe that last night symbolized kind of the beginning of the comeback phase. that doesn't mean there's not still a lot of pain and there won't be pain for a while. but that basically was we've now put out rules to get back to work. trump's now back in charge. it's not the doctors. they've kind of -- we have like a negotiated settlement.

that in my mind was almost like -- you know, it was almost like trump getting the country back from the doctors. right? in the sense that what he now did was he's going to own the open up. >> leading off our discussion tonight, the two co-hosts and executive producers of showtime's "the circus." showtime's nichols and may of politics. alex wagner is a contributing your for the "the atlantic." john heileman, the host of the podcast hell and high water. alex, let me begin with you. i know jared kushner has been on the campaign trail with donald trump because donald trump has referred to him being with him from time to time. not sure if he was with him in nebraska. but it did seem like the buses were a jared kushner production yesterday. if it compares to the way he's handled everything else in the white house. >> well, we'll know it's a jared kushner production if jared kushner indeed had a warm and heated bus that expedited his

return back to a warm and safe hotel room. because that's jared kushner's playbook. i think a lot of the country listens to donald trump on the campaign trail and wonders how is it possible that the president of the united states can lie so flagrantly to the american public as they see the reality of a global pandemic unfolding before their very eyes. we have seen 227,000 american bodies put in the ground. and yet the president is able to drum up a form of mendacity that we have not seen in american history. and i think that kushner tape actually gives insight into how it's possible. when you have so completely broken with humanity. when your sense of empathy has been completely extinguished to a nearly sociopathic degree that you are able to say as a former resident of new york city in the moment that 2,600 americans are dying every day, the peak of this pandemic in april, when you jared kushner are able to say to

bob woodward, this is a good thing, we're opening back up, it's not the federal government's job to handle this, it's all on the governors, and the only thing we're focused on is a political calculation here, it betrays a lack of morality. and that is foundational to everything that is happening right now. >> john heilemann, so it was bad enough that the trump campaign was flying to nebraska, gassing up air force one, in pursuit of one electoral vote. nebraska awards the electoral votes by congressional district. donald trump is virtually guaranteed to get all but one. there's only one that's in play for the democrats. that's what he was there to try to get. and in the process he creates a story of endangerment of voters unlike anything anyone in omaha has ever seen. >> well, let's be clear about it, lawrence. it's an electoral vote he already has. it's an electoral vote that he won in 2016. so it's worse than that.

this is a defensive maneuver. that's how petrified donald trump is right now of his political situation. that he is playing defense on a single electoral vote because he's trying to figure out the large-scale states that could easily blow him out in this race. if joe biden's winning a landslide on tuesday, which is possible. there's no -- trump doesn't have the money, the resources, or the wherewithal to change the race enough to stop that from happening. he's sort of conceding the notion that if that's what's coming, i give up. the only kind of race donald trump can win at this point is a super close race and that's a race where joe biden ends up winning wisconsin and michigan and trump ends up holding on to north carolina, pennsylvania, and florida. and in that case the single electoral vote is the difference between 269-269 and we have a tie or if donald trump loses

that electoral vote, it's 270-268. that is what is really going on here. that tells you about the state of the campaign he's running but it also tells you something about the kind of moral calculus that alex is referring to. right? he's willing to -- he is right now behaving -- he's the most irresponsible human being on planet earth with respect to covid-19. he is the johnny appleseed right now of a deadly virus and everything he does, every night that he does, every day that he does one of these rallies is a day where he's recklessly endangering the lives of not just the people in those rallies but everyone those people in the rallies comes into contact with. if you add all of that on top of what he did to those poor people last night in omaha, it gives you a sense of the scale of it. he's the most iran responsible person on planet earth with respect to covid and he's doing it all in a flailing defensive effort to keep the narrow reeds that could keep this campaign alive for him.

it is a genuinely -- i mean, who knows? maybe it'll work for him, but it's a pathetic sight. >> let's listen to the woman who is the front-runner now for vice president of the united states to be sworn in in january. kamala harris in arizona today. >> our values reflect the values of america. our values tell us we have witnessed the worst, the biggest disaster of any presidential administration in the history of this country. our values tell us that. our values. tell us that we should not be in a moment where over 225,000 people have died in our country. >> alex, what are you seeing when you're watching kamala harris campaign for vice president? >> kamala harris is an excellent emissary for the biden team.

she has passion. she has verve. she i think electrifies the audience in a way that joe biden does not. i've spent a lot of time with joe biden on the stump. he is not the nominee because he is someone who is getting adoring crowds fired up and ready to go the way his former running mate barack obama used to. i think she's a really necessary part of this ticket. but i'm going to be very plain spoken here, lawrence. the reason people are out there is because they are terrified, they are anxious, and they are desperate for change. i think we see an inherent goodness in harris and biden that stands in stark contrast to the message put forward by donald trump and mike pence. but the stakes feel so piercingly high that it's really not even about a particular thing kamala harris says or a particular turn of phrase from joe biden. it really feels like people are trying to pull the country out of a morass.

we are looking down a hole where there may be half a million dead americans by the end of the year. more casualties than in all of the world wars of the 20th century combined. people truly feel like this is life or death. >> john heilemann, joe biden said today about donald trump that -- joe biden keeps saying i'll be the president for people, even the people who did not vote for me. i will represent everyone equally. and he said today that donald trump thinks he is only responsible for the well-being of the people who vote for him. it seems as of last night he doesn't even seem as though he's responsible for that. leaving them out possibly to freeze to death in the cold. i mean, when you look at that imagery of the trump campaign in the final week, doesn't even care enough to try to take care of its own voters in nebraska. that's just an image that it's hard to imagine seeing in any other campaign ever.

>> yeah, sure. and lawrence, i think this is the thing. you and i have talked over the course of the last four years about donald trump. you and i have probably talked on countless occasions about the main thing truly of all the crazy things about donald trump, of all the things that are unprecedented about him, the thing that most sets him apart from every other president that you and i have lived through is that he never from day one made an effort to unify the country. he never tried to. he never made any pretense about being for the people who didn't vote for him, about trying to expand his coalition. he was always from day one about the politics of division, not -- subtraction, not addition. of division, not multiplication. and he campaigned -- and that was the way he won in 2016 and he never saw the upside of particularly any other president who won the presidency having lost the popular vote. we've had a few of those but they usually come into office and say i've got to get bigger here. the only way i'm going to get big things done is to bring more people in the tent. trump never did. he always focused on the people

who already loved him. and that always was the most striking thing. the striking thing that set him apart from every other president, republican or democrat, who came before. and now to your point the incident in omaha is just a version on steroids of what all of these superspreader events that he's doing are. every one of these events, as i said before, is an act of incredible irresponsibility. and when he does them he is basically saying for four years all i cared about was my base and right now all i care about is winning and if that means i'm going to kill my base in the process of getting their votes, get them fired up, get them to the polls, and then if they all keel over dead after this because i brought them to an event where i gave them covid so be it. because all i really care about is not even them. all i really care about is me. >> john heilemann, thank you very much for joining us tonight. and alex wagner, can never thank you enough. alex wagner was one of the very first guests on this show when it began, i don't know, 30, 50 years ago.

alex, thank you. please keep coming back. great to see you. thank you both. >> thanks, lawrence. >> bye, lawrence. and up next, one of the best examples of why votes must be counted after election day. congresswoman katie porter won her congressional seat two years ago after nine days of vote counting in california. congresswoman porter joins us next. ne ♪ whoa! ♪ i feel good ♪ i knew that i would, now ♪ i feel good ♪ get a dozen double crunch shrimp for one dollar with any steak entrée. only at applebee's. it appears you'rentrée. quite the investor. i like to trade. td ameritrade has pros ready if you need help, say... talking through a new strategy... ...just in case things you know, get a little rocky. i'm sorry.

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two years ago katie porter was trailing her republican opponent on election night by 6,000 votes. when all the votes were counted, katie porter won her congressional seat by more than 12,000 votes. joining us now, the democrat who represents california's 45th congressional district, congresswoman katie porter. thank you very much for joining us tonight. we heard donald trump say again today that courts just cannot allow votes to be counted after

election day, which i guess he means, what? right after midnight on election night? what was your experience with vote counting in california and what is the law on vote counting in california? >> donald -- president trump is just being ridiculous. elections are not officially decided on election night in virtually every case. there's a process by which the secretary of state certifies the election result. on election night i didn't win and i didn't lose. the votes were still being counted. and it took nine days of counting votes for me to be declared the winner. and during that time my opponent was actually campaigning to be the chair of the national republican campaign committee. but it was really, really important to allow every validly cast vote to be counted accurately. and i always remind my constituents, a slow count is a safe and secure count. >> california, the state

legislature has passed a law in california that says if your mail-in ballot, which is postmarked on election day or before, arrives after election day, they will count it up to i believe it's 17 days after election day? >> yeah, i can't remember the number of days but it's a significant period of time. and the idea is we don't want anybody who casts a valid ballot to lose that ballot, that vote, simply because the united states postal service doesn't deliver the mail. and there are real concerns, having questioned postmaster dejoy myself, this is somebody who admitted to the oversight committee that he doesn't know much about postage. and he refused to explain why he'd slowed down the mail. so i think california really has a model here. a number of other states with long experience in vote by mail like oregon and washington, there's a lot of good examples of how these processes play out. >> are you telling voters in your district now that as of

tonight it is too late to mail your ballot, to get it there by election day, or are you not concerned about that because california has built in such a big margin after election day for that ballot to arrive? >> in california here people are fine to drop their ballots in the mailbox up to election day. you just want to make sure you get it in before the mail is collected for that day. it's always better to allow a little bit more time. i used to always tell my students, no one requires you to do your homework at the last minute. the fact that you've waited till the last minute is your problem. so it's good to vote early. but we have the very best registrar of voters in the entire united states here in orange county along with the nation's very best weather. >> i want to get your reaction to the audiotape that bob woodward released today with jared kushner in the white house in april. proudly saying that the doctors are not in charge.

donald trump is back in charge. the doctors are not in charge in fighting the coronavirus. >> that's a truly terrifying concept, and we've seen that it's had tragic consequences. this pandemic has been a really harsh and painful reminder of what happens when we discount science. when we allow politicians to hijack research and data. and so i think this is a very, very sad but tragic example of why we need to make sure that we'll elect people who will put their trust in experts, who will invest in science and research, and will always work to keep americans safe first and foremost. >> can you compare for us what you're feeling in your congressional district this week compared to what you were feeling two years ago when the blue wave was clearly moving through california and taking congressional seats away from republicans including the wave

you were a part of. does it feel like that or does it feel different from two years ago? >> i think it's stronger, the sentiment that president trump is leading the country in the wrong direction, that he's creating a lot of harm, that he needs to be checked. i think it's even stronger than it was then. but i think one of the most encouraging things we've seen is as a result of winning in so many different communities in 2018 people are running in every part and pocket of this country. we have amazing democrats running for the house of representatives in alaska, in montana, in ohio, in deep red seats, and they're competing. what we did in 2018 was create a road map that if you run on your values, if you respect your constituents, if you're willing to stand up to corruption and fight for americans' health care you can win in all kinds of congressional districts. >> congresswoman katie porter, thank you very much for joining us tonight. >> always a pleasure.

>> thank you. coming up, we are six days away from counting day. we're not calling it election day anymore. we are calling it counting day. it's the day when we will begin to count votes. steve kornacki will tell us what to expect. steve kornacki joins us next. t. cool it with this. and relieve it with this. but new preparation h soothing relief is the 21st century way to do all three. everyday. preparation h. get comfortable with it. ♪ you know limu,g after all these years it's the ones that got away that haunt me the most. [ squawks ]

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we are just six days away from all of us hanging on every word that steve kornacki has to say in reporting election returns at the big board. and joining us now is msnbc national political correspondent steve kornacki. and there is that big board. steve, are you at home? is that in your apartment? you have one of those at home, don't you? >> you know, i don't think it would fit in the apartment. but if i could get it in there i would. >> what do we need to know tonight, steve? >> well, let's take you through the battleground picture tonight, lawrence. what you see here, these are ten states. the ten states that donald trump

won by single digits in 2016. and what you're looking at here are the poll averages in those states. and i think three here jump right out at you. these are the states where trump trails by the most. the battleground states where biden has the biggest leads. michigan in particular. on average biden's lead now sitting at nine points there. wisconsin the second largest, biden's lead sitting at six. and then pennsylvania four points closer than wisconsin and michigan but you see further apart than these others. what does that look like on the path to 270 page? well, here it is. if you had biden with every state that hillary clinton won in 2016 and then the gray ones are the battlegrounds i just showed you, well, if michigan did go to biden and if wisconsin did go to biden, where he's got those two big leads, you see that would get him up there to 258. and then if he added pennsylvania, that would be it. that would put him over 270, joe biden.

so the first order of business for donald trump is to protect pennsylvania, to get the win in pennsylvania. you see his campaign spending time and money and really emphasizing it. of those three states where he's the most vulnerable, it's the closest. it's the biggest electoral college prize. so that could keep trump in the game if he wins pennsylvania. what would biden do, then, if he goes 2 for 3 in these states, if he doesn't get pennsylvania, where would biden look? the next most promising state on that list for joe biden was arizona. remember, democrats got the win there in the 2018 midterm election. if biden got arizona, 269. that's the tie. however, keep in mind what you didn't see on the list is this. nebraska. they do their electoral votes by congressional district. notice the second congressional district is gray. it's toss-up right now. this is omaha. this is a metropolitan area. democrats have been doing very well there in the trump era.

the polling suggests democrats are well positioned. trump only won it by three points in 2016. if biden gets that along with arizona, wisconsin, and michigan, doesn't lose any of the clinton states, that could be a path that exists for him even if he falls short in pennsylvania, lawrence. >> steve, that could be the cliffhanger version if that's what we're going to see tuesday night. thank you very much, steve. always appreciate it. >> you got it. up next, donald trump's newest supreme court justice did not participate in today's court decisions on voting procedures in pennsylvania and north carolina. but that doesn't mean she won't participate in the new cases that donald trump is sure to file on election day or the day after. that's next. ♪ ♪

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states remaining that want to take a lot of time after november 3rd to count ballots, that won't be allowed by various courts because as you know we're in courts on that." california will count ballots for 17 days after election day, and there is no court in the country that can or will do anything to stop that because california's vote counting law was enacted by the state legislature. there could be legal battles after election day in states like pennsylvania and north carolina, where judges have decided to allow extra days for counting mail-in ballots because of the coronavirus pandemic. today the united states supreme court decided not to hear arguments in cases brought by the trump campaign in pennsylvania and north carolina only because the supreme court decided they didn't have enough time to decide the issues before election day. the court left open the possibility of taking action in

these cases after election day. that means the supreme court might rule that votes arriving by mail in pennsylvania after the polls have closed on election night will not be included in the official vote count. the supreme court's newest justice, amy barrett, did not participate in the supreme court's decisions today in the pennsylvania and north carolina cases, but she didn't participate for the wrong reason. a supreme court spokesperson said, "she has not had time to fully review the parties' filings." that indicates that judge barrett will participate in election cases brought by donald trump after election day, when she does have time to review the parties' filings. if justice barrett participates in those cases, she will become the most publicly corrupt supreme court justice of our time because donald trump would have publicly corrupted her by having said publicly many times that he needed judge barrett on

the court to rule in his favor in election cases. joining our discussion now is ari berman. he's a writer at "mother jones" and the author of "give us the ballot: the modern struggle for voting rights in america." ari, what does the struggle look like tonight around the country? >> it's an intense struggle, lawrence. the fact that the supreme court is deciding cases six days before the election and voters still aren't sure what the rules will be is really shocking. the fact that you have a president of the united states saying he doesn't want ballots to be counted. the fact that you have judges like brett kavanaugh and samuel alito that are raising concerns about legal ballots being counted and basically saying we are going to try to throw these ballots out after election day, that is leaving voters very insecure about whether their votes will be counted. so there are threats to voting rights all over right now and

they are being accelerated in many cases by the supreme court despite these two relatively good rulings in pennsylvania and north carolina tonight. >> now, california, as i was just discussing with congresswoman porter, is one of the places where the ballots can arrive more than two weeks after election day, they'll still be counted if they arrive by mail, but in most of the other states around the country it seems like it's already too late to trust the mail. >> that's correct. 30 states, your ballot has to arrive by election day. in 18 states there is a possibility it could arrive after election day as long as it's postmarked by election day. but what the post office said yesterday was that was the last day for being able to send your mail ballot. so people should not rely on the mail unless they live in states like california in which your ballot can be received for up to two weeks later. right now voters are making a plan and wondering what to do. they should drop their mail ballots off if they have mail ballots.

if they have not gotten a mail ballot yet or they decide not to vote by mail they should vote early in person. and if they decide not to vote early in person they should vote on election day. but sending your ballot in the mail at this point in time is just too risky. drop it off if you can. every state gives you an option to drop it off whether it's at drop boxes or local election officials' offices. those are the best ways to have your votes counted right now. >> and what is your reading of this so far record-setting early voting that we've seen so far? >> it's pretty astonishing, lawrence, to see so many people turning out. i think we're at something like 77 million votes as of tonight. and one of the things i think is happening is there's a backlash to voter suppression efforts, that in states like texas and georgia we're seeing historic levels of turnout. voters are seeing republicans be so open about the suppression. they're seeing donald trump try to hobble the post office. and they're seeing greg abbott close mail drop-off locations.

and they're seeing the president saying he doesn't want votes to be counted. and voters are saying, no, we're not going to allow this. we are going to show up in record numbers to have our votes cast early to make sure they're counted. so while voter suppression has been a dominant theme of this election, i believe the backlash to voter suppression will end up being one of the dominant and defining storylines of this election when the dust settles. >> ari berman, thank you for joining us tonight and thank you for keeping our focus on the struggle for voting rights. you've been very, very consistent about this and an invaluable source on it. thank you very much. >> thanks so much, lawrence. and up next, colorado's contribution to winning control of the united states senate. (fisherman vo) how do i register to vote? hmm!.. hmm!.. hmm!.. (woman on porch vo) can we vote by mail here?

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donald trump lost colorado by five points four years ago. in the most recent poll, he's

now losing to joe biden by 16 points. 55-39. and in that same poll, john hickenlooper is ahead of republican senator cory gardner by eight points. 50-42. >> six years ago -- >> when my party is wrong, i'll say it. when something is broken, i'll fix it. >> how often did cory gardner say his party was wrong? >> he's been with us 100%. there was no waver. >> donald trump said he's been with him 100%, not with colorado. how is that working out for you? >> thank you, cory. >> joining us now, john hickenlooper, the democratic candidate for senate in colorado. thank you for joining us. we appreciate it. >> thanks for having me.

>> i want to go to the voting deadlines in colorado. as i understand it, a mail-in ballot in colorado must arrive by the closing of the polls on election day, is that correct? >> yes, and we're an all vote by mail balloting system. we put this in place about six years ago. we had the second highest turnout in 2018, we saved $6 per voter, and we have this risk auditing process, we can demonstrate that there's less questionable ballots than a traditional election. and republican and democratic clerks created this. back in the first term, when i was governor. >> what is the most important issue in this senate campaign? >> i think, like everywhere, it's the pandemic and health care, and certainly the negligence and incompetence that the white house responded to covid-19, and now we know that

the president knew about the risk and dangers and still didn't warn anyone. the clip on the ad that you showed at the beginning of the show, that was a rally in colorado springs three weeks after they had the senators had that meeting to get briefed on the risks of covid-19. there were thousands of people, president trump and cory gardner. they didn't warn anybody about the risks of being there without face masks, without protection. this mismanagement of covid-19 is what people talk about all the time. and here's gardner and trump trying to roll back the affordable care act, now in the courts, get rid of protections for pre-existing medical conditions. 2.4 million in colorado having pre-existing conditions. people don't like that two-faced, cory gardner said he would be an independent voice for colorado, he goes to

washington and he's a completely different person. >> what has been -- you think the essence of what has given joe biden this big lead that he has in the polls in colorado, so much bigger than four years ago for hillary clinton? >> i think there's a real frustration, not just in colorado, but throughout the mountain west, that the republicans haven't demonstrated they know how to run anything. and covid-19 is the largest glaring example. but it's in everything. it's protecting our clean air and clean water, making sure that more people get health care coverage. finding savings from these incredible increasing costs in health care. none of that is getting resolved. they're just kicking the can down the road, and giving big tax breaks away to wealthy people and large corporations. >> do people in colorado see this as a one-on-one decision, john hickenlooper versus cory gardner, or do they see the dynamics?

do you get the sense that people in colorado care about which party is in control? >> i get the sense that a lot of people do care. but people in colorado are independent, they're going to vote for the right person. cory gardner and the dark money behind him has spent about $40 million mostly attacking me. just a week ago, the ricketts family put another $1 million. they control t.d. ameritrade, they support very conservative causes across the country. they haven't given up. but i do believe that colorado is focused on putting a change in washington, we're tired of the same old nothing happening in washington. i think i've done my best to convince people that i can make a difference back in washington, d.c. >> you've run statewide before, you've won statewide before. you know what it feels like, a

week before the election. here you are, a week before the election. what does it feel like to you? are you confident about your senate race going into this election? >> you know, i spent most of my life in small business. so whenever you feel too confident, you should be looking over your shoulder. there's usually something bad that could happen. we're trying to work as hard as we can trying to turn out the vote. i said the last couple of months, i've been raising money for our victory fund just to get out the vote. go to hickenlooper.com, and people can donate money to get more people manning the phones, more phone banks. trying to make sure that everybody votes. everybody votes. >> former colorado governor john hickenlooper, now the democratic candidate for senate in colorado. thank you for joining us. we really appreciate it. >> vote, vote, vote. >> vote, vote, vote. that is tonight's last word. tonight's last word is vote from john hickenlooper.

"the 11th hour with brian williams" starts now. ♪ good evening once again. day 1,387 of the trump administration, leaving six day. day 1378. that leaves six days until election day and in this final run, we are witnessing two very different presidential campaigns. donald trump held two packed rallies in arizona today. at one of them he said he always liked hispanics. and the following needs to be said. it was a point made yesterday and it's true. trump's campaign depends on his supporters putting their health at risk. and during an uncontrolled pandemic, that is a fact. joe biden spent the day in delaware including a meeting with his health care advisers. on the coronavirus front, this was another banner day in all w